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Indeed, the policy of the Muslim invaders in India ‘seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined (to Indians),’ concludes Danielou.

— Alain Daniélou

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More quotes by Alain Daniélou

Symbolically, Ganesha represents the basic unity of the macrocosm and microcosm, the immense being (the elephant) and the individual being (man).

Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus (1992)

The faithful of Shiva or Dionysus seek contact with those forces which...lead to a refusal of the politics, ambitions and limitations of ordinary social life.

Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today.

We have no texts explaining the rites and ceremonial of the Dionysiac mysteries in the Greco-Etrusco-Roman world, although there are allusions which can often be clarified with the aid of Indian texts... By studying Shivaite rites [from India], the only ones which have continued down to our own times, the real practices of the Dionysiac rites and “mysteries” may be reconstructed.

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